When I was at University, I had the pleasure of dating a very beautiful girl from Nottingham, whom I will call Not Her Real Name.
Not Her Real Name was an English Literature student and, as an aspiring writer myself, I once asked her: "Do you think you would ever write?"
"No," she replied. "I think Iris Murdoch has probably already done everything that I would like to do."
The reason this is germane (apart from the evident absurdity of my ever hoping to sustain a relationship with a beautiful Iris Murdoch fan - and, indeed, I didn't), is that this is pretty much why I write science fantasy, not comedy.
The author who "killed" comedy for me as a literary enterprise was Sir Terry Pratchett. And the reason I mention this now is because I just joined a Facebook group comprising just under twelve thousand fellow Pratchett fans. Think of that. Twelve thousand of the buggers. It is, without doubt, the busiest, most entertaining and above all the friendliest online grouping in which I have ever participated (even more so than the Pillbox Appreciation Society, and considerably ahead of that group devoted to sharing photos of unusual traffic roundabouts).
It reminded me of a post I wrote for my old blog (the one which got invaded by Russians, and eventually died a messy death in the wake of the Carolina Panthers' defeat at the hands of Denver in last year's SuperBowl), shortly after Sir Terry passed away, in which I tried to sum up at least some of my emotions at his passing. I present now, with only minor amendments, that post.
Back in 2013, I spent three weeks on a coronary ward in my local hospital, suffering from a rare condition called “We Think It Was A Heart Attack”; or at least that was what the Specialists kept saying to me. It wasn’t, as it turned out, a heart attack, it was Myocarditis (otherwise defined as “Very Unlucky Flu”), but I only found that out after several tests involving very expensive equipment and, also, needles.
Lots of needles.
It was not a particularly happy time, because I thought I’d had a heart attack, and there were few compensations, other than the staff on the ward – who were wonderful - the fact that I finished the first draft of a novel (and dedicated it to the aforementioned staff), and visits from my girlfriend, who is also wonderful.
One afternoon, I was attempting to lose myself in a novel which I didn’t write. It was a novel by Terry Pratchett. My reading was interrupted by an unfamiliar voice, pitched in a deep, sepulchural tone.
It said:
“I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY”
Looking round, I saw one of my fellow-patients – a genial, accountant type, older than me, with whom I’d barely exchanged six words – smiling a little shyly at me. He nodded at the book.
“Are you a fan, too?”
I admitted that I was, and for the next hour or so, as the sunlight walked on the floor of the ward, and the bustling business of the NHS went on around us, we sat together, me on my bed, he on the visitors’ chair next to it. We drank coffee, shared a packet of Ginger Nuts and chatted amiably about the books of Terry Pratchett. We were both very happy.
Thinking about it, a mere few weeks after Pratchett’s passing, it seems to me that the work of very few other authors has had quite the capacity to do that: to bring together people of very different backgrounds, tastes, outlooks, even generations, in amiable conversation. Merely sitting in a public place reading one of his books seems almost an invitation to such a conversation. Over the years, I’ve ended up swapping Pratchettisms in all sorts of places, and with all sorts of people, from teenagers to grandmothers, from my son to my boss.
I find myself wondering how he managed to achieve that.
The books, of course, are full of wonderful characters, and even better jokes. And one of the pleasures of swapping them with others is that – unlike with Monty Python, for instance – you rarely hear the same one twice. Everyone has a favourite one-liner, a favourite scene, a favourite gag. And they are almost all different.
In his seminal book about football, Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby noted that his almost maniacal support of Arsenal FC had somehow come to define him to his friends, to the point that – when they sent him messages, cards, letters (remember them?) – there would almost always be some mention of the “Arse” tacked onto the beginning or the end. Likewise, when the news of Pratchett’s death broke, I was surprised by the number of friends who texted me, or said something to me in the pub, or on Facebook, or at work.
Even people who don’t know their Ankh from their Morpork, their OOK from their EEK, are still aware of those friends to whom such matters are important, or at least germane.
And, just as football fans do with their teams, it seems to me that Pratchett’s fans had an actual relationship with him, and with his books. Even if they’d never met him – I didn’t – he was still, somehow, a genial, sharply-observant, even comforting presence in our lives. It’s more than just escapism – although that’s a part of it. The Discworld was a world and a mirror of worlds, and it seems to me that, not only did the books provide a release from this world, they also provided a way of dealing with it, a slightly skewed perspective on the absurdities of life which somehow made things easier to cope with.
Also, of course, they are very funny. If anyone ever creates anything more brilliantly absurd and beautifully-judged than the “Doorkeeper Scene” from Guards! Guards! – or two more acutely-observed and endlessly entertaining characters than Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg - then I want to know about it. Now, please. By return.
Like every author, it seemed that his perspectives, his motivations, his preoccupations, changed over time. He grew. In later books, his interest in Society, in the nature of institutions, in Economics, in change – particularly technological change - and their influence on the lives of ordinary people, brought about a different kind of Discworld. It’s probably fair to say that he didn’t quite take everyone with him – I, for one, find Moist Von Lipwig a less engaging character than, for instance, Nanny Ogg (others will disagree; that's the point): but that never detracted from the richness of his books and, if they became more thought-provoking and less prone to cause normally shy people to laugh loudly on Tube trains, then that was merely a different kind of quality, not a lesser one. And, in one of my personal favourites from his later career, Unseen Academicals, he proved that, when he wanted to, he could still produce extended scenes capable of being actually painful, so funny were they.
To an author, Pratchett stands as a measure against whom it is better not to judge oneself, and that is why I gave up on writing comedy. I can sum up my attitude in another two thousand words, or just two: he was, quite simply, The Boss.
And if that isn’t sufficient, let me leave you with the image with which I began: two middle-aged men in pyjamas, of very different backgrounds and characters, forgetting for an hour the difficult times we were both going through, in the simple pleasure of a conversation about something we both loved.
With Ginger Nuts.